Biel Rd10 - Wang Hao strikes back in last round to win Biel

8/3/2012 – The dice were thrown early on as Anish Giri missed a tactic which gave victory to Wang Hao. Still, that alone did not guarantee the gold as Magnus Carlsen could beat Etienne Bacrot. A late mistake meant that this might actually happen, but the French player held fast and denied the Norwegian the top spot. Hikaru Nakamura beat Viktor Bologan to catch Giri in 3rd-4th. Final report and wrap-up.

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The
2012 Biel Chess Festival is taking place from July 23rd to August 2nd, in a number of
groups: the Master Tournament (eleven rounds Swiss); the Main Tournament (nine
rounds Swiss); a Rapid and a Blitz tournament; Chess960; Youth, Simultaneous,
Chess Tennis, ChessBase training seminars. Of greatest interest is of course
the Accentus Grandmaster Tournament with six very strong grandmasters playing
a double round robin: Magnus Carlsen, Hikaru Nakamura, Alex. Morozevich,
Wang Hao, Etienne Bacrot and Anish Giri.

The rate of play: 40 moves in 100 minutes, then 20 moves in 50 minutes followed by 15 minutes for
the rest of the game, with 30 sec increment per move. The scoring system is
three points for a win, one for a draw and zero for a loss. No draw offers are
permitted before move 30.

Round ten

Round 10: Thursday, August 2, 11:00h

Hikaru Nakamura

1-0

Viktor Bologan

Wang Hao

1-0

Anish Giri

Magnus Carlsen

½-½

Etienne Bacrot

The final round lived up to the promise of drama, with hours of nail-biting for both the players and the spectators.The reason is that the order of events maximized this effect.

Anish Giri has added 35 Elo in the last month

The first game to end was the decisive game between Wang Hao and Anish Giri. In a sense it was almost anti-climatic with the Chinese player achieving a small pull, though nothing close to decisive, when Giri played a careless 24…e6? That was punished immediately, leaving him with a lost game which ended on move 32. This temporarily placed Wang Hao in the lead, whilst awaiting for Magnus Carlsen’s result.

Anish Giri and Wang Hao analyze their game

Wang Hao scored the biggest win of his life and is the first Chinese player to win an
international Super GM tournament.

As an aside, a number of readers will have noticed the rather odd presence of the Canadian flag next to Wang Hao’s name in the crosstables in the express report:

I had no idea that Wang Hao was Canadian!
Sam (Toronto, Canada)

I didn't know Wang Hao was Canadian!
Graham Ferrier (Toronto, Canada)

You assigned Hao the Canadian flag.
Plapp, N (Lemon Grove)

Obviously we did not ‘assign’ the Canadian flag to the Chinese player. The ChssBase program saw Wang Hao and decided he was in fact Wang Hao Yuan, who plays in Canada, and unfortunately we failed to catch this. Our thanks to the eagle-eye readers who caught this.

Magnus Carlsen tried his best to beat Etienne Bacrot, but the Frenchman held

At this point, it seemed very much like Carlsen was not going to be able to get anything from Etienne Bacrot, who was holding on with great tenacity and avoiding the Norwegian’s attempts to lead him astray. A draw was on the horizon. Then a mistake took place and Carlsen was on the offensive. It was precisely the sort of position he loves to milk: a n endgame with a nice advantage, that few, if any, can play as well. If he managed to win, the title was his, if not, Wang Hao was champion. Ultimately, only he (or our resident endgame expert Karsten Mueller) can say whether he might have forced a win, but whatever the result of this analysis, he did not.

Etienne Bacrot and Magnus Carlsen review the main moments of their game

Hikaru Nakamura passed Anand on the list and is world 6th with 2783

The third game was also not without impact, as Hikaru Nakamura overcame Viktor Bologan, allowing him to join Anish Giri in 3rd-4th and share bronze.

Hikaru Nakamura analyzes his game with live commentator Klaus Bischoff

The victory of Wang Hao in Biel is of great importance, since he is the first Chinese player to win outright a Super GM tournament. In fact, he was more successful than his namesake, Wang Hao, world-famous table tennis player, who played in the 2012 Olympic men’s finals the very same day, and came out second for silver.

The win has produced a bit of controversy, not because of any suspected foulplay, but the difference between the traditional scoring and the three-point scoring. Per traditional scoring, Magnus Carlsen would have won outright with 7.0/10 as opposed to Wang Hao’s 6.5/10, but under the three-point system, which rewards wins Wang Hao’s six wins gave him the clear gold with 19 points over Carlsen’s 18. Some readers felt this invalidated the value of the ‘soccer’ scoring system.

I have nothing against Wang Hao: he is a great player. But to be the winner at Biel is absurd after losing to Magnus twice. It just emphasizes the nonsense of the 3 for a win 1 for a draw rule. Sooner or later the chess world will understand that draws are ok. Some of the draws at Biel were more exciting than the decisive games. In my opinion Magnus won Biel.
Nick McGeat (Petaluma, CA, USA)

Karpov has long ago made clear the stupidity of the 3-1-0 points system. Take a nine-round tournament: one who wins three games and loses six games gets the same amount of points as the one who scores nine draws. Well, one more proof with Biel 2012.
Michko (Saint-Maur, France)

There is no clear cut answer however. The purpose of the system is much like a number of rules designed to reduce the number of draws, and keep the chess hard-fought and dynamic. Alternatives such as the Sofia rules are no different but are less successful. Players have come to realize that they can get around the 30-40 move limitation by repeating the position, and sure enough, in the last years, the number of draws by repetition under 30 moves has increased disproportionately. The three-point system provides extra incentive for a player to take chances and play for a win. This means that players wishing to maximize their tournament winning chances need to take this into account, and make small adjustments (or large) in their openings strategy and over-the-board decision-making. If you watch Wang Hao’s post-game analysis in round eight, it is clear he consciously chose lines that avoided a safe direction.

The Master tournament, an eleven-round swiss open with over 30 grandmasters, was led for a long time by French GM Romain Edouard, however in the final two rounds he was caught first by top-seed Sergey Movsesian, and in the last round by Igor Kurnosov whose tiebreak beat both.

See also

3/27/2018 – Sergey Karjkin didn't succeed in posing serious problems for Ding Liren and after, what he called, a "terrible blunder", he had to scramble to save a draw. That left Caruana in great shape to win the tournament. Mamedyarov struggled to find winning chances with black against Kramnik, but in the end that game ended drawn as well. Caruana, needing only a draw, was in command against Grischuk and even won the game to finish in clear first by a full point! | Photo and drawings by World Chess

See also

1/28/2018 – Magnus Carlsen won the 80th Tata Steel Masters which was decided in a blitz tiebreak over Dutch number one Anish Giri. The players contested two blitz games with 5 minutes plus 3 seconds per move, with no sudden death Armageddon game needed. Vidit played solidly to earn a draw that was enough to win the Challengers, as Korobov could not manage to pull off a win with black on-demand. | Photo: Alina l'Ami TataSteelChess.com

Video

Former World Champion Mikhail Botvinnik liked to play the French and once described it as a 'difficult and dangerous opening'. But in this 60 minutes video IM Andrew Martin suggests an aggressive and little-used idea of the renowned attacking player GM Viktor Kupreichik to counter the French: 1.e4 e6 2.d4 d5 3.e5 c5 4.c3 Nc6 5.Be3!?. Andrew Martin uses the games of Kupreichik to show why this line could catch many French aficionados unprepared and is very dangerous for Black. Attacking players will love this line and the unusual complications that it promotes.